Uropi is an International Auxiliary language created by Joel Landais. It is a synthesis of all the common points that can be found in Indo-European languages. Its main characteristics are simplicity, internationality and transparency

As far as spelling is concerned, each letter should be given its most international value. If we compare the written forms of the word "nature" in different European languages, it is easy to observe that the two syllables "na-tur" are perfectly international. If each letter is given its most international value, then we will leave aside the French and English pronunciation and pronounce "natur" as in German, Italian or Spanish, just as in the Uropi word "natùr".

Should we keep traditionalspellings ?

Too many irregularities would make the language too complicated "and we must remember that a great many people have to struggle all their lives to master the orthographic intricacies of their own language"… "it is perhaps well to keep in mind the fact that a change in spelling does not trouble readers very much ".

Jespersen considers that diacritics like ç ("cédille" in French), š, č, ř in Czech, the Spanish "tilde": ñ (and of course the circumflexes in Esperanto: ĉ, ŝ, ĵ, ĝ…) make the language more complicated. I would rather tend to think that he clings to this opinion essentially because in his time, such diacritical marks could be a problem for typewriters and printers. On the contrary I think that diacritics in Czech, as in ještě, přijít, připustit…make Slavic and Baltic languages much less difficult to read than consonant clusters as in Polish: jeszcze, przyjść, przypuszczać(still, come, admit) or in Albanian: keshtjéllë, zhbllokoj, zhvleftësoj, ngjyrósje (castle, unblock, devalue, colouring). Jespersen adds "All such signs present unnecessary difficulties in writing, in telegraphing and in printing", and it "implies greater expense". Of course these arguments are no longer valid today with computers, which enable us to print any letter from any alphabet, including Chinese and Japanese ideograms, Arabic and Devanagari alphabets … etc.

Jespersen also tells us that it is better to do without written accents. Here I totally disagree with him; in Occidental they are used to indicate the place of the stress, as in Spanish and Italian. I find this very convenient in a language where the place of stress varies. For example in English and modern Greek, you never know which syllable to stress, but in Greek the stress is indicated with a written accent on each word, which helps learners a lot. Of course in Uropi there is not a written accent on each word, but only when an unexpected syllable is stressed: for example un Italian, but un Espàn (an Italian, a Spaniard).

Vowels

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Contrary to that of natural languages, the phoneticsystem of a constructed language should be as simple as possible. For example Volapük has ü and ö [y] and [ø] which are quite easy for French people or Scandinavian to pronounce, but not for English and Spanish speakers or Russians. "But this is one of the beauties of an international language, that it needs only five vowels":a, e, i, o, u, pronounced as in continental Europe … and it is the same for consonants. Therefore it "can allow a certain amount of liberty in pronouncing these sounds without any misunderstanding arising, as is often the case in national languages".Everyone of us will inevitably transpose some of his phonetic habits into the international language, which will take on different hues according to each user's mother tongue.

The little tests we carried out with Google Translate show us that most continental Europeans are able to pronounce Uropi without any problem: the pronunciation of Uropi sentences read by Poles, Czechs, Italians, Hungarians, Finns, who didn't know a single word of Uropi, might seem slightly different, but these sentences were perfectly intelligible, and what is more, they "sounded Uropi". A basic study of the language's phonetics is necessary for some other nations such as the French or the English. "No language"Jespersen says "not even a simple interlanguage, can be learnt without some instruction, either through the mouth of a teacher, or through a book, or through both …".

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"It would be a serious mistake in an artificial language to distinguish an open and a close e (as in French chantais and chanté), or two a's (as in Frenchpâte and patte)". In Uropi it is simply recommended to use an open o to avoid pronouncing kopo, cepo, voko(to buy, to catch, to speak) as in French: copeau, chapeau, vocaux. But the most important thing is "to make each vowel as clear as possible".

In a constructed language you cannot have words "solely distinguished by the length of the vowel, as is done so often in many languages", for example in German: bieten ≠ bitten, or in English leave ≠ live.

Consonants

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L should be pronounced as in French, German, Italian… and not as ł (dark L) as in English: well, mill, call or in Russian in: был, была, было(byl, byla, bylo).

R should best be pronounced trilled as in Uropi, Italian, Spanish.

Oddly enough, Jespersen doesn't follow the principle "One letter > one sound; one sound > one letter", for he uses X for the sounds [ks] and [gz], which is for me a mistake. Besides, X is pronounced [ʃ] in Catalan and Portuguese, [dz] in Albanian, etc.

In Novial, Y is pronouncd [j]; this is also an error, in my opinion, because it is pronounced like this only in English, Spanish and in a few French words like yaourt or yoga, whereas it is pronounced ü [y] in German and Scandinavian languages.

J is pronounced [ʒ] as in English "measure", as J in French, Romanian, Portuguese and Catalan, but it is pronounced [j] in all Germanic, Slavic, Baltic languages, in Italian, in Albanian as well as in Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, that is at least in 16 languages: it is the most international pronunciation that has been adopted in Uropi. This is why Uropi uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) letter: ʒ for the sound [ʒ]; this is a variant of the letter z, and is linked to the ž, ż, ź = [ʒ] that can be found in Slavic and Baltic languages. Jespersen himself says that "Some time in the future it may be possible instead of the digraphs sh and ch to use the phonetic symbol [ʃ].", so, why not ʒ as well ?

The only solution that Jespersen has found is simply to remove the letter C from his alphabet, momentarily though, since he reintroduces it in the form of the digraph ch for the sounds [ʃ] et [tʃ].

Uropi doesn't use such tricks and insists on respecting the principle "One letter > one sound; one sound > one letter". This is the reason why we use the letter C for the sound [ʃ] (sh) and tc for the sound [tʃ] which is very rare in Uropi. This may well seem artificial, but it is much less so for Italians and Romanians who often pronounce c as [tʃ]* or for Turks, who have ç for [tʃ]

* In the Roman dialect, "Romanesco", [tʃ] becomes [ʃ], so that they say [ku'ʃina] and ['djeʃi] for "cucina" and "dieci".

The letter Z, just like C, is a problem for Jespersen because it is pronounced [ts] in German, [ts] or [dz] in Italian, [θ] en Spanish…etc., and besides, because the letter S is sometimes pronounced [z] in French and Italian: chose, cosa, case, casa.

For me, this isn't a real problem; may be Jespersen considers it so because Scandinavians do not pronounce the sound [z]. In Uropi, we have a very simple phonetic rule: for each voiceless consonant like c, s, t, f… there is a corresponding voiced consonant: ʒ, z, d, v… Therefore, as in English and French, we have the [s] and [z] in son / sound and zèbre / zebra, which can also be found in all Slavic and Baltic languages, in Greek, Albanian, Romanian, Hungarian (sz and z)… etc. In Uropi, S is always pronounced [s] and Z always [z]: hase (houses) is different from haze (hares), fase (faces) from faze (phases), kase (cash desks) from kaze (cases).

Jespersen, on the contrary, removed the letter Z from the Novial alphabet, as he did for C; he only uses S that can be pronounced [s] or [z], which does not seem very logical.

To conclude, we can say that Uropi spelling has two specific features: ʒ = [ʒ] and c = [ʃ] (sh), which is not more strange than ß and sch in German, than ø, å and æ in Danish, ñ and ll in Spanish, ç, â, ê, ô, û in French, ç, ã, õ, â, ê, ô in Portuguese, ă, â, ț, ș in Romanian, not to mention Slavic and Baltic languages …

English, on the other hand, has no "peculiar" graphemes, but largely makes up for it with the irregularities of its pronunciation which is rather odd: i = [ai], a = [ei] or [æ] or [ɑ:], e, ee = [i:], oo = [u, u:], to give only a few examples…

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Azalea

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Stress

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As far as stress is concerned Jespersen distinguishes three powerful principes:

- The principle of value: the most important syllable for the meaning of the whole word is stressed.

- The principle of unity, which means always stressing the same syllable, such as the last syllable in French, the first syllable in Hungarian, the one before the last in Polish.

- The principle of rhythm: it is important to alternate strong and weak syllables, place a secondary stress, etc.

J."It would obviously be a mistake, in a language constructed like ours, to apply strictly and solely the principle of unity, stressing everywhere the last syllable", which would mean frequently stressing purely grammatical elements and in most cases neglect meaningful syllables. "On the other hand, he says, it would be equally impossible everywhere to apply the principle of value, for which syllable is the real valuable bearer of the meaning in such words as character or charlatan?", crocodile or elephant ?

Perhaps the best rule would be the one used in Idiom Neutral, i-e stress the vowel preceding the last consonant: which is the case in Uropi words like aksènt, silàb, princìp, usvòk, elefànt, krokodìl, honòr, simbòl… (accent, syllable, principle, pronunciation, elephant, crocodile, honour, symbol)

But this rule should be complemented by a second rule that specifies that adding consonantal endings does not change the place of stress. Thus U. terms like: patris, nulim, liamor…(fathers', nowise, lover) will be stressed on the first syllable, and others like: privatim, amuzad, kopolnen…(privately, amusement, completed) on the second, which comply with the principle of value. More precisely, we will say that in Uropi, adding a suffìx or an ending (whether it is grammatical or not) does not change the place of stress.

J."There are certain words in which the stress demanded by our rule may seem unnatural…" to people speaking certain languages "but it should be remembered that formúle, konsúle, gondóle,…Afríka, Ameríka,"(= Uropi: formùl, konsùl, gondòla… Afrìka, Amerìka), "stressed in the way here indicated are not more strange than the corresponding accentuations in French, and that amfíbie,… fúrie, komédie, enérgie, Itália, Fránsia, galérie, etc., (= Uropi: amfibij, furij, komedij, energij, Italia, Francia, galeria) would be less natural if i before the final vowel had been stressed."

Euphony

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In Novial, all nouns end in a vowel, but not necessarily in -o as in Esperanto; they may end in a, e, o, u; only -i is reserved for adjectives. In Uropi, however, nouns may end in a consonant: man, kat, kun, keb, sol, mar, noc… (man, cat, dog, head, sun, sea, night), as in English, French, in Germanic, Slavic, Celtic languages and in Albanian, or they may end in -a, as in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek and Slavic languages: ʒina, dota, snivia, teatra, kina, kokia… (woman, girl, swimming pool, theatre, cinema, kitchen).

J: "Every adjective that would otherwise end in more than one consonant is provided with the ending i: simpli, exakti, fixi, kapabli,…" (simple, exact, fixed, capable), which is also the case in Uropi: tristi, fisti, abli… (sad, firm (fast), able), "and the same i may be added to any adjective ending in a single consonant…" to facilitate pronunciation when it is followed by a term beginning with a consonant cluster. So it is in Uropi as well; for example: strit > striti strade (narrow, narrow streets).

In Uropi, this "mobile -i" can also be added to the suffìx -li > ili to avoid consonant clusters as in Universal Glot; for example: distruktli, aktli… (destructible, feasible); in Uropi, we have aktili, bemarkili (feasible, remarkable). People often say that Uropi is a fluid language.

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Lucitòr in Kapsali, Kitera, Grecia

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Number

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To indicate number, Jespersen excludes the Esperanto J, which produces forms that have been much criticized such as: "ĉiuj tiuj bravaj homaj agoj" (all these brave human acts) and "ĉiujn tiujn bravajn homajn, aktojn" in the accusative. He also leaves aside the Scandinavian R, the -E which is often found in German, the -I of Italian, Romanian, Slavic languages and Latvian which was also adopted in Ido (but Jespersen needed it for its adjectives). Therefore he chose the ending -S, as in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese. This is undoubtedly an excellent choice, and indeed Uropi also has a plural in -S for the nouns ending in -a: ʒikas, dotas, snivias, kokias, as in Spanish: chicas, hijas, piscinas, cocinas (girls, daughters, swimming pools, kitchens).

Yet Uropi has a plural in -E as well for the nouns ending in a consonant.

First because this plural in -e is not limited to German, as Jespersen said, but is very international as it can also be found in Italian: donne, figlie, cucine, ragazze(women, daughters, kitchens, girls), in Romanian: camere, zile, teatre (rooms, days, theatres), and in certain Slavic languages like Polish: pokoje, okazje, stacje (rooms, occasions, stations), Czech: pokoje, postele, tramvaje(rooms, beds, tramways), Slovak: stroje, okuliare, ulice(machines, glasses, streets), Serbian and Croatian: žene, godine, ruke (women, years, hands), Slovenian: sobe, roke, kave (rooms, hands, coffees).

Here are two sentences in the plural in Novial and Uropi so that we might compare: N. Li altri femas esed oldi … Li altri homos esed oldi= U. De alten ʒinas sì seni…De alten mane sì seni. (The other women were old…The other men were old)

As in Ido and Novial, Uropi adjectives are invariable, except when they are used as substantives: U. Zis vari sorte aplis. Prigùs tu de roje o de glene ? (Here are various kinds of apples. Do you prefer the red ones or the green ones ?)

Sex

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J. "Grammatical gender as in French or German, where the word for 'chair' is feminine in one and masculine in the other language (la chaise, der Stuhl), can of course have no place in an international language. But all constructed languages do have, and must have, expressions for the natural sex-differences".

In a few cases there are different words such as father /mother, brother /sister, son /daughter…( terms inherited from Indo-European), but most of the time, grammatical endings are used. For Jespersen, the best and most international ending for feminine is-a, which was adopted in Idiom Neutral and Occidental, and thus in Novial, and can also be found in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, in Greek, in Slavic and Baltic languages, and even in Arabic: malik / malika = king /queen; this is of course the case, in Uropi as well: raj /raja

However, Jespersen had a few problems to derive adjectives from his masculine and feminine nouns, simply because he was still too influenced by Esperanto. For example he has fratro and fratra instead of adopting the Indo-European terms brother and sister. From the former words, how can you build an adjective in -al ? Fratral wouldn’t make any sex difference; so he adds an N, which gives fratronal and fratranal, which are a bit strange for brotherly and sisterly (in Uropi: frati and sestu). Similarly, he forms homonaro and homanaro with the Esperanto suffix -aro, for a group (or a crowd) of men or women. Is this absolutely necessary ? In Uropi, we have humanad for all human beings, mankind, but do we really need specific terms for a multitude of men and a multitude of women ? Couldn’t we merely say: a group of women, a crowd of men, all the girls in the class ?

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Bronzi kwal, muzea Olimpiu, Grecia

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Neuter

Novial just like Uropi has a neuter. In Uropi, as in English, all the nouns that do not refer to animate beings (humans and animals), i.e "things" like table, chair, wind, sun, snowas well as abstracts nouns like truth, faith, hope, joy, happiness … are neuter, and correspond to the personal pronoun: je ("yeah"). As in English or in German, neuter nouns don’t have any particular ending in Uropi: they may end in a consonant: liuv, mar, led, bunad… (rain, sea, bed, kindness) or in -a: teatra, kina, vena, sola… (theatre, cinema, vein, sole).

Jespersen had the funny idea to add the Latin ending -um to neuter nouns. I find this ending rather heavy and not particularly beautiful. Thus he makes a distinction between verum = the true « thing » and vereso = the truth (abstract noun). -Um is also used to name languages: anglum, fransum… and is even extended to pronouns: lum = it, tum = that (thing), disum = this (thing), quum = what, nulum = nothing, omnum = everything,… etc. Was this really necessary ? It is not natural at all. In (nearly) all European languages, the adjective is used to name the language: Ruskiy, polski, svensk, dansk, deutsch, französisch, English, Swedish, inglese, inglés, français, Português… just as in Uropi because Franci, Engli, Swedi, Rusi(French, English, Swedish, Russian) are short for Franci linga, Engli linga, Swedi linga (French, English, Swedish, Russian language)… (cf Ruskiy jazyk, eliniki glossa= Russian language, Greek language). Let us compare:

In Uropi as in Universal glot, there are two ways to form higher degree comparatives: adj-es…te = adj-er…than (as in Germanic languages), which is more euphonious and not so heavy, and maj + adj… te = more + adj.… than (as in Romance languages). For example: beles te…, maj varmi te…(more beautiful than… warmer than)

I find Novial comparatives rather heavy and not very euphonious, in particular "tam bun kam" (as good as), compared to Uropi os…te, English as…as, or German so…wie…, which are much more fluid. Why add a specific conjunction "kam" and not merely use the conjunction ke, as in French and Spanish que and in Uropi te ? Besides, the adverb "plu" is very little international: apart from Latin, it exists only in French and Italian, whereas an adverb starting with M- would be much more international: Sp más, Por mais, Cat més, Rom mai, Eng more, G. mehr, Du meer, Da mere, Sw, Nor mer (cf Universalglot mer), Welsh mwy, Breton mui… This is why, in Uropi, we have chosen maj which is the Romanian word..

Novial also has specific forms for the superlative, which are also rather heavy: maxim and minim. For example: Lo es li maxim bravi ek li fratres = he s' de maj bravi od de frate(he’s the bravest of the brothers). Wouldn’t it be simpler to use "the + more", "the + less" as in Romance languages and in Uropi ?

This is what Jespersen says about the genitive: "Among the numerous cases found in primitive Aryan (Indo-European) and so well preserved in Sanskrit and ancient Greek, the one that has best resisted the corrosive tendencies found in all languages is undoubtedly the genitive.…" Probably because « the meaning of this case was better defined than that of such cases as the dative or accusative, and that there seems to be a natural desire to have a convenient way of expressing relation between two notions (nouns) of the kind indicated by the genitive ('belonging to' in the widest sense",as in Uropi: "De veste, maʒa, pater, poème, morByroni" (Byron’s clothes, mother, father, poems).

Moreover the genitive corresponds to the possessive adjectives that can be found in nearly all the languages using a preposition instead of the genitive. Even Zamenhof imagined a kind of genitive in -S in his "correlatives": kies, ies, nenies, ĉies… = whose, somebody’s, nobody’s, everybody’s…

In Novial the genitive is formed with -N as in Finnish; in Uropi, on the other hand, it is formed as in Latin with -I(s) and in Greek with -U(s) (for the nouns ending in -a). For example: N: li sinioron = U. de siori (the gentleman's), li homosen = de manis (the men's).

These endings are also used for the possessive determiners in both languages: N: Men, vun, (lon, lan, len), nusen, vusen, (losen, lasen, lesen) = U. mi, ti, (hi, ci ji), ni, vi, (li) (my, your (singular)… (his, her, its), our, your, (their). The possessive determiners in Novial seem rather heavy and artificial; those of Uropi are more natural, and at the same time, perfectly regular.

In Novial, the genitive is placed before the determinatum (the head) as in English and Scandinavian languages, whereas in Uropi it is placed after the head, as in Latin, Greek and Slavic languages. For example: N. Men patron kontore = de burò mi patri (my father's office; in modern Greek:to grapheio tou patera mou, Russian: бюро моего отца, cf lat: Vox populi, vox dei; N. li doktoron filio = de son de doktori (the doctor's son); li homosen laboro = de vark de manis (the men's work).

There are two cases in Uropi when the genitive is placed before the head:

- when the genitive is generic and not specific: for example: Mani veste (men's clothes: it corresponds to an adjective with the same meaning: "male clothing") ≠ de veste de mani (the man's clothes).

- when there may be an ambiguity: De burò mi patri, wen vu vizì jesta (my father's office whom you saw yesterday: you saw my father) ≠ Mi patri burò, wen vu vizì jesta(my father's office which you saw yesterday: you saw the office). De son de doktori, we se mol ric (the doctor's son (whose father) is very rich) ≠ De doktori son, we se mol ric (the doctor's son who is very rich: the son is rich).

Esperanto has accusatives everywhere: with substantives, adjectives, pronouns… only the article is spared. For example: la bonan homon = the good man, la bonajn homojn = the good men. J. "…it cannot be denied that Zamenhof by his strict rule has created a great difficulty for his followers, who at any moment have to have the grammatical analysis of each sentence at the tip of their tongues". Even in Latin, German, Russian, Greek, there are numerous forms that do not distinguish the accusative from the nominative (neuter, plural, sometimes the feminine: N die Frau / A die Frau…)

We have to be very careful: it is very easy to mix things up. This would also be the case when you have no accusative for personal pronouns in sentences like: U: He kon ma bunes te VA (te he kon va)≠ He kon ma bunes te VU (te vu kon ma) = He knows me better than you (than he knows you) ≠ He knows me better than you do, or I kon ha bunes teCA (te i kon ca) ≠ I kon ha bunes te CE (te ce kon ha) = I know him better than her (than I know her). I know him better than she (than she knows him)

Personal pronouns in the accusative make things much easier.

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"Belad id tradisiòn", Khora, Kitera, Grecia

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Pronouns

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Concerning personalpronouns Jespersen says: "In the singular there will be no need to distinguish two degrees of familiarity, as in F tu, vous, D du, Sie; the forms tu, te, which might have been chosen for the familiar address, are otherwise employed; and an international language should be democratic or polite enough to treat everybody alike."

This is a great error, because the aim of an auxiliary language is not to reform people's way of thinking or social habits. If you introduce a kind of "ideology" into an interlanguage, it soons becomes a Newspeak like Orwell's in "1984".

Moreover, all Indo-European languages, except English, use the pronoun "tu", which is, as a matter of fact, one of the most common, most international roots (it exists at least in 48 languages). In Hindi, there are even three degrees of politeness for the second person: tū, which is very familiar, tum, a little more formal, and āp very polite and that can also be used in the plural (āp lōg).

I think Jespersen was too influenced by Esperanto and English. And though in English, people say "you" to everybody, few societies make class distinctions as conspicuous as the British society; languages have very little influence on people's social behaviour. Moreover, Jespersen admits that the forms tu, te in Novial are "used elsewhere"(for example for the demontratives: ti, te, to, tum…)

Novial se corresponds to the Uropi reflexive pronoun sia (oneself). As in Uropi, it is not used in the first and second persons (unlike in Slavic languages). For example: Me non odia me (self) = U. I hais ne ma (som) (I don't hate myself).

Reciprocal pronouns.

Jespersen observed that there is a general tendency to "to let such pronouns coalesce", for example in English: one another, in German einander, in Dutch elkaar, in Danish hinanden, and also in Uropi with unaltem.

J. "In most constructed languages the same forms are used for relative and interrogative words, and it is true that thisrule finds some support in many national languages. But there is no intrinsic necessity for this identity", and even in natural languages "there is often some distinction" between the two; for instance in Latin: Quis ? quid ? are interrogatives and qui, quod relatives, in French Comment ? is different from comme, in German: Wann ?from wenn. The German (der), and Danish (som) relatives are not used as interrogative pronouns.